GUEST OPINION: Is equality attainable in the classroom?

Is it really true that every student in the United States is free to a fair and effective education? Even those with disabilities? This controversial question leaves parents and families wondering if their child really is receiving the education promised to them. Most children with disabilities such as autism, learning dis...

By Destiny LaPointe

The Herald News, Fall River, MA

By Destiny LaPointe

Posted Oct. 12, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Oct 12, 2013 at 12:15 PM

By Destiny LaPointe

Posted Oct. 12, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Oct 12, 2013 at 12:15 PM

» Social News

Is it really true that every student in the United States is free to a fair and effective education? Even those with disabilities? This controversial question leaves parents and families wondering if their child really is receiving the education promised to them. Most children with disabilities such as autism, learning disabilities, Down syndrome, etc. all have to have special accommodations to fulfill their needs as students.

Some teachers are doing what they can in order to show these children that the world is theirs and that their life outside of the classroom is more than just growing up to work a day job at a fast food restaurant, but that they have the potential to achieve greatness. But some show what some researchers call implicit bias.

I have seen students pushed through the system just so that they would graduate. Do we really want these teachers in our classrooms teaching these students barely anything?

For teachers, a degree in teaching special education students doesn’t mean this teacher is successful in teaching each specific student. Each student is an individual — not just another number sitting in a classroom — and should be treated as such. Each disabled student must have individual attention so they are able to learn just as their peers. This individual attention will ultimately serve to teach these children in a way that best suits them and so they are able to grow as successful students.

College for most students with disabilities is hard to accomplish. In an article written by Doug Lederman titled “College and the Disabled Student,” he states that “the study finds that disabled students over all are less than half as likely as their peers to have attended college in the two years after high school, but the college-going rate varies greatly by type of disability: Students with hearing or visual impairments are as likely as non-disabled students to have done some postsecondary work.” Most students with disabilities aren’t able to go to a college and receive a successful degree because of their disability.

This study also shows that because of these statistics and the interviews conducted with these students, “Fewer disabled students went on to college than were expecting to. About 77 percent of students interviewed while in high school said they aspired to get a postsecondary education, but only 31 percent had taken some postsecondary classes in the period after they finished.

“But students who aspired to go to college were far more likely to do so: Only 5 percent of those who did not envision attending postsecondary school have enrolled in two-year colleges, compared with 36 percent of those who expressed the goal of attending a two- or four-year institution.

“About two-thirds of postsecondary students with disabilities received no accommodations from their colleges. That was attributed in large part to the fact that about half of postsecondary students with disabilities said they do not consider themselves to have a disability, and another 7 percent acknowledged having a disability but had not told their colleges about it.”

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This could be interpreted in two different ways: that these children want to challenge themselves to feel like they aren’t suppressed by their disability or that they are in fact ashamed of their disability due to a lacking support system.

Having been around multiple students with various disabilities I can say for myself that most of them were always grateful to be alive and to accomplish minor things such as just bagging groceries in a store because they felt that they had finally accomplished something for themselves. These students had a bright outlook on how they did things and even though they may be held back in some form due to their disability, if given a stable belief system and individual attention I believe that these students can overcome any disability or ill thought put against them.

Their yearning for an education and the drive to work shows that these students have the ability to do anything. If their disability makes them so much more different in comparison to their peers, and these teacher and parents treat them as such, how do we expect their peers to accept them for the people they are?

Each student deserves to be treated as an individual and should be given the specific attention that they so desperately crave simply because they are the ones who are capable of changing the world and influencing their peers in a way that cannot be achieved in the classroom.

Destiny LaPointe is a freshman at the University of New Haven studying biology with a concentration in pre-medicine. She is a recent graduate of B.M.C. Durfee High School, Fall River.